Top management in the 1970's...and beyond;

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An address given by Robert Beyer at the top management session of the National Retail
Merchants Association's 55th Annual Convention in New York City, on January 10, 1966.
Top Management
in the 1970s...
and Beyond
People say that if you forecast far enough into the
future, you're on relatively safe ground. If you're right,
you become something of a seer. If you're wrong, not too
many people remember anyway.
Chronological time has become a highly unreliable
measure of what constitutes the future in terms of change,
innovation and invention. The "future," has had a way
recently of sweeping down upon us and becoming part of
today—or tomorrow, at the latest. It isn't enough to be
able to discern the dimension of change the future will
bring, we must also be able to appreciate when that
"future," as fashioned by change, will arrive.
In military parlance, strategy is the science of planning
to meet the enemy under the most advantageous condi­tions.
Strategic planning for the future in business—to
meet its challenges, opportunities and problems under the
most favorable conditions—is a basic function of top level
management. How well management can continue to
meet current problems—its operational or tactical moves
—will depend on how well it has discharged its planning
responsibilities in the past. This is fundamental. But the
lead time between planning, or strategy, and its employ­ment
in operational problems has been greatly com­pressed.
Subject to the forces of revolutionary change in
every element of our society—technological, economic,
social, cultural—management has less and less time be­tween
planning and implementation. (There is a paradox
here though—which I will expain later—and that is the
lengthening time required for the planning or preparation
function in certain areas—such as systems.)
The reason for my first point is not the fact of change
itself, or even its size or dimension. It is the rate or the
velocity of the change that is significant. That rate is con­stantly
accelerating—like a car with a fast pickup that
never stops going faster and never arrives at a speed limit
We see this in every possible measure of our environment
whether it is population, education, production or, most
significantly, knowledge itself. So conscious are we of the
rapidity of change in virtually every area that we speak
of it quite properly in terms of "revolution" and "explo­sion."
Nothing illustrates this better than the computer indus­try,
the development of which has provided an impetus
to change and at the same time has given us the means
to cope with it.
The first commercial computer was not installed until
1950. A dozen years later 13,000 were in use. Today, onh
two years later, 20,000 are in use. In an economy with
five million businesses this number of computers is not in
itself extraordinary. What is startling is that the rate of
increase in two successive years has been over 50 percent.
By 1970 the computer industry will have increased some
2 THE QUARTERLY